Preview

The Lemon Orchard

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1047 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Lemon Orchard
The Lemon Orchard character analysis
The Lemon Orchard by La Guma expresses the clashes of the characters personalities throughout the short story. The main characters that are shown within the story are the African man, the leader, the man who was carrying the lantern, and two other men that followed.

The leader of the group is presented to be the most dominant compared to the other men. 'He was a big man and wore khaki trousers and laced-up riding boots, and an old shooting jacket with leather patches on the right breast and the elbows. ' The simple use of adjectives that are used such as 'big ' reinforces his size to the reader. The old shooting jacket and leather patches gives the reader an idea of his age and what type of class he belongs to. The quote, 'He is not dumb. He is a slim hotnot; one of those educated bushmen. ' Gives the reader the impression that the leader of the group has grown up learning that colored people are the foes and he is superior to them.

The colored man is silent throughout the short story. For example, 'Are you cold, hotnot? ' the man with the light jeered. The colored man said nothing, but stared ahead of himself into the half-light made by the small lantern. ' This is to show the readers that he is ashamed of being within this situation. He refuses to talk to the men who are going to give him a beating. The quote, '..but stared ahead of himself into the half-light. ' This can symbolize the colored man foreseeing the future of his fate. The light in the in front of him can represent his hope or he could see this as the light at the end of the tunnel.
Posted by Samm at 11:17 PM
0 comments: e Lemon Orchard by La Guma represents many challenges throughout the short story. These challenges are usually expressed by choices that certain characters have to adjudicate upon. These choices are either acknowledged or ignored therefore these actions effects the outcome of that choice.

The colored man has the challenge of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Characters play a major role in the novel The Bean Trees, however Taylor Greer or formally known as Missy Marietta plays the largest role in the novel. “... she entertained me with her vegetable-soup song, except that now there were people mixed in with the beans and potatoes...And me. I was the main ingredient,”(Kingsolver 246). This quote describes Taylor to the point, because she is the main ingredient to many people's lives. However, it also shows how Taylor may be somewhat self centered.Many of those people rely on her and would not be the people they are if it wasn’t for her. Taylor is a smart, brave, and courageous young lady. One of the first times the reader really gets to see Taylor’s true colors is when she decides that she is going to leave; she buys her car and tells…

    • 1956 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    By using imagery such as "heavy rain and sun," "glossy purple clot," "red, green, hard as a knot," "stains upon the tongue," "red ones inked up," "thorn pricks," "rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache," "canfuls smelt of rot," and "sweet flesh would turn sour," the speaker describes a chronological order of a harvesting event to allow readers to visualize. This helps the readers to understand a literal description of blackberry-picking in late Autumn.…

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The beginning with the grandfather he feels like a traitor but you don't really know what for, did he betray his ancestors, his grandson or his family, you never find out. The grandfather wants them to have two identities one behaving like typical slave, and the other full of resentment. The narrator believes he will win respect and praise by obedience. The battle royal, the blindfolding shows how the white men don’t see them as people but as inferior. The white men make them fight each other to show the black men as savages, I guess the narrator doesn't see that that they are playing him yet. When the narrator is giving his speech with quotes form Booker T Washington, he slips up and says social equality for social responsibility, and threatens white supremacy, the hostility and…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Battle Royal Thesis

    • 588 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Another of the narrator’s character traits is his intelligence. The superintendent of his high school helps to show the narrators intelligence in this story “he knows more words than a pocket sized dictionary” (285). The narrator doesn’t want to come right out and say he is intelligent, but expresses it in the way his superintendent spoke of him “Gentlemen, you see that I did not overpraise this boy” (286). The narrator says “I delivered an oration in which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of progress. Everyone praised me and I was invited to give the speech at a gathering of the town’s leading white men” (278). He was very well spoken and presented himself as such.…

    • 588 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Throughout the story, each of the characters experience personal conflicts as they struggle with reality as it tears apart their hopes and ambitions. The masculine ideal was important to these men and where they found themselves lacking, they found the need to defend themselves by fighting. Slim, the jerkline skinner possessed the masculinity that the others respected, and the others looked up to him as a result. “When he finished combing his hair he moved into the room, and he moved with a majesty only achieved by royalty and master craftsmen. He was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch… There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love.” Curly, the ranch owner’s son, on the other hand, was focused on compensating for his small size by picking on others weaker than himself. “The swamper considered… "Well . . . tell you what. Curley’s like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys. He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he’s mad at ‘em because he ain’t a big guy. You…

    • 1160 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This passage, told from the viewpoint of a character, describes said character’s walk to a station. On the way, he encounters a group of dying black people, overworked and starved, as well as a spotless white man. The passage is mainly concerned with giving thorough descriptions of each, and thus establishing a direct contrast between the two appearances.…

    • 1628 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Racism in Battle Royal

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Going back to the beginning for a minute the narrator was always looking for someone to help him or for advice but what he didn't realize is that all of the help he needed' he was not going to receive it in a nice way. He says "but first I had to discover that I was an invisible man"(pg 253) by him saying this he believes no one in the world knows he exists and he wants to change that. What he does realize by the end of the story is that no matter how hard he would try he still remained black in a white man's world.…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Flag Tattoos Symbol

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages

    There are many symbols in the story; for example, black cigar, tuxedos, and the flag tattoo. The flag tattoo represents the American dream, something that the black boys were not able to have or achieve. The unknown narrator is one of the brighter students in the community and is given the opportunity to give a speech, but to give the speech, he has to go through many difficulties. First, he had to fight his other colored boys and second, he got electrocuted attempting to pick up coins— which turned out to be fake. The whole process of going through the trial is symbolic because the black community had to go through many troubles to gain freedom, and even after gaining freedom, they did not have it any easier because they were still discriminated…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    How does the first paragraph of the story sum up the conflict that the narrator confronts? In what sense is he "invisible"?…

    • 294 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Battle Royal

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The young black man's Grandfather, before dying, is the one who gave this advice that would affect this mans life style. The young man was always told by his parents to forget his words, but he just couldn't. They where like a curse not only to him but to his family as well. These words caused him so much anxiety. The life he lived was basically through his Grandfather's words, he didn't know any other way. He lived fighting for what he wanted and he acted a certain way to white's, just to assure them that he knew his place in life. If he acted any different way they didn't like that at all. The whites didn't see him as a human being, they just see him and all the other blacks as the young man says, 'invisible.'…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The few opportunities offered in the ghettos, infested with poverty, constant crime, insufficient health care, and drug addiction, further standardized society’s racism. Big Red’s only outlet of success was through criminal activities. He took pride in being a self-made issuer of marijuana, alcohol, and prostitutes. Big Red flaunted his success by exhibiting himself as a “Harlem archetype”, dressing in bright zoot suits, long gold chains, and unkinking his naturally curly-qued hair. Big Red manifested his anger toward racial standards in a desperate quest for respect.…

    • 850 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Ballad of the Salad

    • 1581 Words
    • 7 Pages

    1. Lennie held his closed hand away from George’s direction. “It’s on’y a mouse, George.”“A mouse? A live mouse?”“Uh-uh. Jus’ a dead mouse, George. I didn’ kill it. Honest! I found it. I found it dead.” (pg. 5)2. George said “Ya know, Lennie, I’m scared I’m gonna tangle with that bastard myself. I hate his guts. Jesus Christ! Come on. They won’t be a damn thing to eat.” (pg. 37)3. “Gotta bad gut ache,” said Candy. “Them God damn turnips give it to me. I knowed they was going to before I ever eat ‘em.” (pg. 44)4. “I don’t want no fights,” said Lennie. He got up from his bunk and sat down at the table, across from George. Almost automatically George shuffled the cards and laid out his solitaire hand. He used a deliberate, thoughtful slowness. (pg. 55)5. His voice grew soft and persuasive. “S’pose George don’t come back. S’pose he took a powder and just ain’t coming back. What’ll you do then?” (pg. 71)6. “A guy sets alone out here at night, maybe readin’ books or thinkin’ or stuff like that. Sometimes he gets thinkin’, an’ he got nothing to tell him what’s so an’ what ain’t so. Maybe if he sees somethin’, he don’t know whether it’s right or not. He can’t turn to some other guy and ast him if he sees it too. He can’t tell. He got nothing to measure by. I seen things out here. I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know if I was asleep. If some guy was with me, he could tell me I was asleep, an’ then it would be all right. But I jus’ don’t know.” (pg. 73)7. Crooks sat on his bunk and looked at the door for a moment, and then reached for the liniment bottle. He pulled out his shirt, poured a little liniment in his pink palm and, reaching around, he fell slowly to rubbing his back. (pg. 83)8. And Lennie said softly to the puppy, “Why do you got to get killed? You ain’t so little as mice. I didn’t bounce you hard.” He bent the pup’s head up and looked in its face, and he said to it, “Now maybe George ain’t gonna let me tend no rabbits, if he fin’s out you got killed.” (pg. 85)9. She was…

    • 1581 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator's main objective throughout the story is giving a good speech. He is constantly thinking about his speech. While blindfolded and being beaten in the fight, he is still going over it in his mind. This moment is symbolic of his innocence. He is blind to the attackers that he must fend off, and he is also blind to the racism happening around him and the dehumanizing acts that he is forced to participate in.…

    • 834 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The narrator comes into contact with three man-led brotherhoods with very distinct ideologies. The first brotherhood the narrator encounters is led by a West Indian man by the name of Ras, the Exhorter. Ras the Exhorter supports a specific, black-centered worldview. He feels deeply rooted for black segregation and power. Ras believes in returning to his roots as a black man and has a hatred for the white man. Perhaps Ras is modeled off of Marcus Garvey, a political figure of the 1950s who believed in returning to Africa and his roots. Brother Jack, the opposite of Ras, is another leader the narrator meets and joins his Brotherhood. The Brotherhood practices to an ideology based on that of American communist groups in the 1930s. Their ideology is centered on the Marxist theory of history which holds that those of lower social status must submit themselves to the unavoidable class struggles on the path to equality (Marx: Theory of History). The last leader of a brotherhood…

    • 2025 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    blackberry picking

    • 846 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The poem Blackberry-Picking, by Seamus Heaney, is about a group of children who become overexcited over picking berries then sobbing after their hard work has rotted away due to the fermentation of the picked berries. Through this ordinary depiction of fruit rotting, the author illustrates the theme of human aging and mortality. The author expresses this theme through a sequence of events, using allusions, similes, and every aspect of imagery.…

    • 846 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics